RIT strives to keep pace with the mobile boom

Several new university apps available; traffic growing

The RIT mobile app program continues to expand in an effort to keep pace with the booming popularity in mobile and tablet devices worldwide.

On Christmas Day in 2012, a record 17.4 million of these devices were activated. That far surpassed the Christmas 2011 record of 6.8 million activations. In 2012, consumers spent on average two hours each day using mobile applications, an increase of 35 percent over the previous year; according to the analytics firm Flurry. Industry experts expect the upward trajectory will continue.

So what’s new at RIT? For one-stop shopping, the RIT community is reminded to visit www.rit.edu/mobile. The Mobile @ RIT website serves as a resource for information related to official university mobile apps, as well as highlighting apps produced by students and others in the RIT community. The site encourages other developers to submit published apps that will be featured in the Mobile @ RIT Mobile Apps Showcase.

An updated version of the official RIT mobile app for Android and the Apple iPhone became available last November. New features include RIT athletics (with schedules and news for individual sports), and RIT photos, videos, and social (Twitter and Facebook) posts. The apps continue to feature RIT and RTS shuttle-bus schedules (the most popular module on the app), RIT news, a searchable campus map, an events calendar, dining-service locations with hours and menus, and lab hours. The apps are available for download from Google Play and the iTunes App Store. RIT also offers a mobile-friendly website compatible with a variety of mobile devices, which offers easy access to the same features. To use the RIT mobile Web app, go to http://m.rit.edu.

A new RIT mobile Web app tablet version was launched in December. It is available on iPad, iPad mini, and some Android tablets. Anyone accessing m.rit.edu with one of those devices will see the new tablet layout of the mobile Web homepage.

There are a number of other mobile apps that can be found and downloaded through the RIT Mobile Apps Showcase on the Mobile @ RIT site. They include:

The tablet version of The University Magazine for the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 launched in November. The free University Magazine app is available in the iPad App Store, Amazon Appstore on the Kindle Fire and in Google Play on the Nexus 7. The spring, fall and winter issues of the magazine are currently available. The tablet version includes news and feature stories about RIT, along with videos, interactive photo galleries and links to RIT resources.

RIT SportsZone published an app to keep tabs on Tiger athletics. Users can watch complete episodes of current and past seasons. Users can also find highlights in SportsZone Hockey Central.

DIG: This ASL Dictionary from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf is a modified version of their popular ASL Video Dictionary and Inflection Guide (DIG). The program shows 2,700 signs and 650 sentences that demonstrate how signs change, or “inflect” to convey different meaning.